PROFILE 8X8
Designing for a New Experience
Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, Design & Operations shares how 8x8 is creating solutions for new customer service professionals.
A few weeks ago I had to make a complaint after a bit of a rubbish stay in a hotel. It’s not something that comes naturally to a lot of people but we all have those points where we say enough is enough. On this occasion, it was being woken up at 7 am by the loudest gaggle of hens I’ve ever heard, along with the unmistakable sound of drilling just over an hour later. It’s never an easy conversation, which may be why the place where these interactions have spread as the way we communicate changes. Some will prefer the in-person approach if it’s possible, others will pick up the phone, personally one of the more effective ways that I’ve found a resolution to an issue is by tweeting the brand. But while finding a resolution may be easier if you criticise a company on social media, for the business, dealing with the issue in the first place is one of the modern headaches they have to deal with. Naturally, there are solutions on the market, combining social media and chatbots with the traditional call centre, but none are specifically tailored for who Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, design and operations at 8x8 describes as a “knowledge worker”. “We realised there are users outside of the contact centre who will interact with customers or support those who do,” said Soni. “They need the same information that
the contact centre agents need, like the CRM integrations, AI analytics, and the calling capability so they can jump on calls as and when they need to. “But these workers are very different from an agent, in fact, they’re really not an agent, they identify as a knowledge worker, or a software engineer, a billing specialist, a researcher, nurse, or receptionist. “These are the roles that we see as a ‘knowledge worker’, they collaborate internally, but then jump on calls with customers to help them out. When they touch base with customers it creates high value for the customer which converts into high CSAT scores.” With such value on the line, 8x8 has launched Engage, a cross-organisation solution that seeks to connect every department to the contact centre in order to bridge the “gaps” that appear when customers have a problem. The idea is to improve the quality of the resolution for the customer by giving these knowledge workers the tools to deliver a quality service. As Soni points out, these interactions are often more important than the average call and often need first-hand experience to find a resolution. “The KPIs for these employees are different than the contact centre agents,” said Soni. “In the contact centre, the most important number is the fastest time to close a ticket, whereas customer satisfaction is more important for knowledge workers. “These are a very different group of workers and it’s where we started blurring the lines between UC and CC, to offer one platform that can have capabilities from our CPaaS solutions. For example, Engage uses the same data lake so if a customer comes in on a contact centre call but is then touched by somebody outside the contact centre, it will be logged as the same interaction, same support ticket, even though it is a different kind of interaction.”
Dhwani Soni
8x8.com
8x8 has launched Engage, a cross- organisation solution that seeks to connect every department to the contact centre in order to bridge the “gaps” that appear when customers have a problem.
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